THE IMPORTANT LESSONS OF BACKFENCE'S CLOSING — The announced closing of Backfence has brought about some refreshing and much-needed discussion on the subject of hyperlocal news and the web. This is an important discussion, because a lot of companies are looking to hyperlocal as the salvation of their business model.

StartupWeekend: 70 Founders Create Company In One Weekend — StartupWeekend is occurring right now in Colorado. The goal - create a startup in one weekend, which will be called vosnap. Everyone who attends is a founder, with equal equity. Ideas for what the company will be have been gathered since June.

Technology's Untanglers: They Make It Really Work — SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers …

$19 mln price tag for space station toilet — www.chinaview.cn 2007-07-06 18:01:47 — Paying 19 million U.S.dollars for a Russian-built international space station toilet system is a bargain compared to building one from scratch, a NASA spokewoman said Thursday.

One More Thing... This week was pretty slow at Cerulean Island. July 4th came mid-week, and we decided to put out a quick build on Monday to address some important bugs that would have negatively impacted some of the new alpha testing team's first impressions.

YAY! Twitter Blabber Can Now be Phoned In — Michael Arrington gives Dave Winer a big 'ol pat on the TwitterGram back while wondering what the "media hacker" will "blend up next." — No need to wonder about what Winer was blending yesterday, thanks to the mighty Twitter itself: "Fresh cherries"!

Steorn Now Being Openly Mocked — Irish startup Steorn blew the hugely hyped demo of their new perpetual energy machine when "excessive heat from the lighting in the main display area" led them to abort the affair. However, the guys at LouderVoice somehow got access to Steorn's "CEO" and "Machine" for this exclusive demo.

Gizmoz To Get Mainstream Attention At MTV Music Awards — Gizmoz, an Israeli startup that allows people to create realistic 3D cartoon avatars of themselves and embed them on other websites, will be getting a little mainstream attention at the upcoming MTV Music Awards in September.

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers — ON a Sunday night last month at Daddy's, a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, more than a dozen people in their 20s and 30s gathered at a professional soiree, drinking frozen margaritas and nibbling store-bought cookies. With their thrift-store inspired clothes …

Microholography milks 500GB out of DVD-sized discs — A group of scientists working together with the Institute of Optics and Optical Technologies at the Technical University of Berlin claim to have discovered a way to store 500GB worth of data on DVD-sized discs.